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9 conjugal union. As the Holy Father explains, “from the words whereby the man and the woman express their willingness to become ‘one flesh’ according to the eternal truth established in the mystery of creation, we pass to the reality which corresponds to these words.” 27 The vows which begin “I take you as my wife—my husband” represent a binding contract, but marriage is not constituted as a sacrament until it is consummated in sexual intercourse. Marriage is, therefore, a one-flesh voice of the spouses begun at the altar in the words of their vows and continuing as a life-long ratification and consummation of those vows through the language of their bodies. When spouses love as God loves, they see the other with “the original good of God’s vision…” 28 In other words, when man and woman love each other—with and through their bodies—they not only see each other as God sees, but they also see God in the transference of divine glory to the created body. St. John Paul II further describes this mystery, saying it is …as if through…creation, man and woman see each other even more fully and distinctly than through the sense of sight itself, that is, through the eyes of the body. They see and know each other with all the peace of the interior gaze, which creates precisely the fullness of the intimacy of persons. 29 As the Holy Father teaches elsewhere, the human body reveals the living soul, and in its complementarity of maleness and femaleness, is “a witness to creation as a fundamental gift, and so a witness to Love as the source from which this same giving springs.” 30 The peaceful gaze into the interior depths of the other’s soul is a recognition of the spouse as a person made in the image of God—made for communion—as well as a glorious discovery of the original gift of life of a loving Creator. 27 John Paul II, “Language of the Body, the Substratum and Content of the Sacramental Sign of Spousal Communion,” Vatican.va, January 5, 1983, sec. 4, accessed May 27, 2018, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul- ii/it/audiences/1983/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19830105.html. 28 John Paul II, “Creation as a Fundamental and Original Gift,” para. 2. 29 Ibid., para. 3. 30 John Paul II, “The Nuptial Meaning of the Body,” Vatican.va, January 9, 1980, para. 9, accessed May 27, 2018, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19800109.html.